Are you a new user of When I Work? If so, we want to take some time to let you in on a few lesser-known app tips that can help you become a true scheduling pro. Take a look at the following 5 tips and start getting the most out of our app:

ProTip #1: Copy a Shift In 1 Second

Did you know there’s a simple way to quickly copy and drag shifts when making a schedule? It’s easy! Here’s how to do it:

ProTip #2: Copy/Paste Schedule Templates

Want to copy the schedule you made for this week and use it next week too? You can by using the Copy Schedule or Load Template options that appear when you click the wrench icon:

ProTip #3: Labor Forecasting

Need to do some quick labor forecasting? Just click on the numbers underneath the names of your employees and input Projected Sales for each day:

ProTip #4: Position Sort/Filter

Want to do some position planning for the week? You can easily sort and filter your positions by selecting and deselecting them as seen below:

ProTip #5: Custom Sort Employee Roster

Did you know that you can rearrange the order your employees appear in the employee roster and schedule? You can click and drag when you see the three vertical dots on the left side of your employees. Here’s how to do it:

We hope these tips help you spend even less time scheduling employees this week and beyond.

Comments

106 Comments

Will you ever have anything to black out dates? Say blackout (employees can’t request off) 14 days from the day. If it’s October 3rd they can’t request off from the 4th to the 17th. This will make it so they have to call me and I can tell them whether or not they can request that time off….Would be useful.

Thanks Steve. Good note. This is something on our roadmap. We’re going to do it to include more than blackout for time off though. For example, it will likely also allow you to block off days that the business is closed or events on days where employees need to be extra prepared.

Hi, I would be very interested if you chaps can introduce rules for time off e.g. only 2 people off in any department” and pairing rules so person A must go opposite person B in shift work and they can’t both be off at the same time….let me know

Hey Celeste – Setting a capacity on how many employees can request time off on a given day is not something on our roadmap, but it’s a great feature request! We hope to create more robust time off options but it’s not something planned for the near future.

We NEED this. Our old scheduling system automatically rejected any requests after the first person for any particular day, and it was very helpful for employees to get an instant notification if they were attempting to book a trip or event on a day that definitely would not be available for vacation days.

Hi – have you all thought about the potential to be able to swap/drop/sub for part of a shift but not for the entire shift? For instance, say an employee had a delay come up and couldn’t be there for the first hour of their shift – it would be great if there could be an option to have another employee cover that first hour of their shift but not have to delete/swap/drop the entire shift. Thanks!

Along with being able to copy/paste shifts on the schedule, that would also be a cool feature to have when setting employee’s availability. Even have templates of the same set of availability. It gets repetitive and takes time to select the same shift for 5 days a week for 15 employees. Just a suggestion.

Hi Chris – Thanks for the suggestion! Are you referring to the Availability Preference screen or the scheduler? It sounds like each week you input your employee’s preferences. If that’s the case you can set the preferences to be on going for set period of time so you don’t have to input preferences weekly. If I’m not talking about the same thing feel free to correct me :)

Hi Beverly = I’m not quite sure what you are asking. You want your email address to be auto-populated when you go to log into your When I Work account? That might be a browser function that allows you to save login credentials but I can check it out for you.

Hi Jens – When you say it comes back next time you copy, are referring to the next time you use the “Copy Previous Week” feature or the template? This is something that you should email support@wheniwork.com about. They will be more helpful :)

Can you please allow employees to Request Off the same day they are scheduled to work. Currently their request will automatically expire, even though their shift doesn’t start for several hours.
Thanks

Joseph – Your employees should be able to request time off on the same day they work. Request appear as “Expired” if the request is not “Approved” or “Declined”. I do see on the manager end that it appears as “Expired” when it should appear as “Pending” until approved. I’ll make sure that gets look into by the dev team. If you have any other questions or issues be sure to email support@wheniwork.com

Will you be coming up with a better way to track time off? For instance, the ability to enter the amount of PTO hours for each employee in their PTO “bank” and when time off is granted, the number of hours is deducted from their bank?

Julie – That’s a great idea and I’m glad you made us aware that that would be helpful. It’s something we’ve thought about but have to dig into a way to implement it. Because it’s more of an HR feature it’s something that would likely be offered through an integration with an HR software like ADP or BambooHR.com. However, it’s good to know that it’s something our customers are interested in :)

Hi When I Work Team.
I just want to thank you all for being so good on customer service. An other congrats to development team that makes me exciting when i get updates, new looks, features, etc. you guys came a long way. Way to go.
Sincerely.

Hi Esther! We have not made any recent updates to creating/adding breaks. Right now the only way to do it is to include the break time in the shift notes or to create separate shifts to show when the break is on the schedule. Enhancing how breaks works is something for us to consider though!

Larry – When an employee is deleted all of their information is removed from the account. However, if you use the schedule export it will include deleted employee’s schedules as well as active employees.

Hi Natalie – If your schedule is Unpublished your employees should not have access to view it. The only exception is if you have employees setup with supervisor or manager access. If you see this as a problem I recommend that you contact support@wheniwork.com so they can help with it :)

Hello, every 6 weeks we have a themed event at our business and I need to schedule more staff as a reminder for myself I put in 12 to 12 in open shifts and then write a comment. Would it be possible to have a note/comment section at the top of each day so that i can put the events in in advance and that reminds me to change regular schedule. This would also help the employees to see what is going on. Thanks

1) Allow employees to enter the maximum number of shifts they would like to work per week.

2) Create a hierarchy within job roles so that certain people can be asked to work even if they don’t have the same role. For example, an ice cream maker can take the shift of a scooper but not the other way around.

3) Allow the entry of store hours so that the word “close” can be used rather than a specific time. We, like many other restaurants, have different hours for different locations and for different days of the week.

We work a continuous “4 on 2 off” shift roster. Can your system accommodate that? Seems to operate only in set weeks – can copy or duplicate shifts? Please assist as the rest is exactly what we require.

Hi Ryno – We don’t have an automatic way to create a “4 on 2 off” roster, it will have to be done manually. However, you can quickly copy shifts from one day to the next by holding the command key (on a mac) or control (on a PC) and clicking on the shift you want to drag and drop to copy. This link will explain how to do this: https://help.wheniwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/201814167-Copying-Shifts-and-Schedules I hope that helps!

I’m looking for a way to add different appointments throughout the day – over several people (20) over several locations. I also need the person assigned to be able to modify the appointment if it were to cancel or if they had a sudden conflict. I need a calendar that several people can add events to or change and publish. I need to add an event (appointment) publish it, and have someone volunteer to do it.

Hi Lisa – It sounds like you are looking for more of an appointment scheduling tool rather than an employee scheduling tool. While When I Work could maybe do what you need it to for appointments, it might not be the most ideal. I recommend checking out this appointment scheduling app: https://squareup.com/appointments If I’m wrong about you trying to do appointment scheduling and need to find a way to schedule yours staff let me know and we can help you out!

Hey I am trying to add a new employee to my scheduler and it is informing me that his email is already being used. I had him create a new email for this and again it is telling me that the email address is already being used. What can I do to get him added to my scheduler?

Hi Sarah – Sorry you are running into trouble! I want to get you the help you need, in order to do that I need you email support@wheniwork.com and give them the name of the employee and email you are trying to use to get them setup. They will get it figured out for you right away!

Hi Daniel – All of your employees,supervisors, and managers will have their own login for your account. They will login using their email and then they will create a password for their login. If you have other questions about this let us know at support@wheniwork.com :)

Hey Maureen! Many of our users use the OpenShifts row at the top of the schedule to create the shifts needed for that week. Then they drag and drop the shifts to the employees they want to work them. You can also save the shifts in the OpenShifts row as a template so you can quickly load the schedule week by week.

If you want your manager to have part of a shift on the floor and part off you will need to create separate shifts or add a shift note to their shift indicating that they are to work on the floor and off the floor.

There isn’t a way to change salaried pay rates to annual salary, but it is something we have in discussion. Supporting salaried workers is definitely a feature we’d like to implement some day.

Is there a way to create shift blocks that can only be used on certain days? I am looking to create shift blocks that can only be used Saturday and Sunday as well as shift blocks that can only be used on weekdays making it easier for supervisors to schedule shifts depending on our varying open times.

Hey Roger! There is not an app that you need to download for your computer. You can login into your account at app.wheniwork.com every time you want to access your account from your computer. I hope that helps!

We are looking to have our employees access the notes feature (not just managers and supervisors) to communicate mileage, progress notes, etc. Is it a possibility to allow employees to access the notes?
Thanks!

Hi Allison – Only managers and supervisors can add notes to a shift, however there a couple of other ways your employees could communicate notes from their shifts.

1. They could use the messaging feature within the app to email the manager/supervisor about their shift notes.
2. If your employees are clocking in/out with our attendance app, we will be adding clock in/out notes to the mobile apps soon.

I’d like it if there was a total hours scheduled this week feature. When I’m scheduling the employees I’d like to be able to see how many hours I have them scheduled without counting… Gasp… I’m lazy :-)

Hey Michelle – From the web app the total hours scheduled per day/week appear at the bottom of the schedule. You can also view total hours scheduled by employee. Those numbers will appear under their names in the scheduler. Total hours scheduled is not something available on the mobile apps but it’s something we are looking at getting added! Thanks for the feedback :)

Hi, I’m using the free trial version of WIW at the moment and just wondered if I can schedule staff to have open-ended shifts. On a paper rota I would write something like 1800-close, meaning they finish when the business quietens down (I’m in the hospitality business). They then fill in the actual time once they’ve worked it. On a quiet day they may go at 2100, on a busy day they may still be working at 2330. Is this something I can do on WIW?

Hey John – Thanks for checking out When I Work! Right now there is not a way to input open-ended shifts, all shifts require a start and end time. However, it is a feature we will consider for the future. What some of our customers do currently is input an end time and include in the shift notes that the end time is pending. I hope that helps! -Angie

My company would really be able to use a option for long-term requests off as opposed to having to input unavailability for each schedule. For example, every tuesday and thursday off on a continuous basis until stopped, or every first monday of the month. Also would really be interested in making blocks of time where employees cannot request time off. Another interest is being able to limit how many employees can request time off, i.e 2 employees per shift.

I was wondering if WIW is going to bring back the feature of being able to edit hours after you close-out the week and before you finalize the hours without having to create a separate position for accounting for overtime hours.

I own a commercial construction company and we have to follow Prevailing Wage guidelines that states that any time after 8 hours per day is overtime and all time on Saturdays regardless of having 40 hours or not is overtime and all time on Sunday/Holidays are double time.

Right now it will show overtime hours on Saturday in an employee has reached 40 hours Mon-Fri. The ability to edit hours after close-out is what got me to use WIW. I know you would get more construction companies to use WIW if you brought that feature back.

Hey Jesse – Thanks for the comment :)
Re-working the payroll flow is something we thought a lot about. The change was implemented to keep numbers consistent throughout all stages of the payroll process. You can edit time sheets after you close out the payroll by inputting a new time entry or editing an existing one. Being able to edit within the payroll summary view is not something we will be bringing back. Sorry about that! If you have other questions or feedback let us know!
-Angie

I’d like to reiterate the need for putting breaks into the schedule. We need to make sure that we have coverage for the different positions throughout the day, and it would be great to be able to see that on the daily schedule – for example, to be able to tell at a glance whether someone has lunch scheduled from 11:30 – 12:30, or from 12:30 – 1:30.

Hey Kelly- Thanks for the feedback! I totally understand why viewing break coverage would be helpful. Right now, the best way to show this coverage would be to create separate shifts for the day i.e. 8a-11a and 12p-6p. Doing this will show where the break is within the schedule. If you have other questions or feedback let us know :)
-Angie

Hi Michelle – At the moment any notes made at clock in/out are only viewable from the employee’s time sheets in the web app. This article will explain how you can access those notes from the web app.

We have a new iPhone update that will be adding the functionality to review and edit employee time sheets, which will also include viewing notes left at clock in/out. Look for that in the next couple of week :) I hope this helps! -Angie

Hey Michelle – You can view your employee check in/out notes from the web app viewing their time sheets. This support article will explain further LINK. We will also be adding it the iPhone app in the next update. I hope that helps!

I have just started my trial version of wiw and am quite impressed with what I see so far; My question is…. Is there a way for only certain employees to take certain shifts? I do see the feature of roles but my situation is that we only have a few employees that are capable of baking so they can do the early morning shift, also we are licensed so we require an employee of age to work evening shifts. With that being said the morning baker could also be a Batista as well as a cashier. The early morning only requires one employee but that employee would do multiple roles. Making a schedule where only employees with certain qualifications can work a particular shift. Would be a great feature. We are Challanged with that problem currently when shifts are traded and the employee that excepted the shift is not capable of all the tasks required for that shift, or possibly taking an evening shift and not being of age to serve alcohol.
I look forward to your response.
Ken

Hey Ken – Exciting that you just started your trial with us :) I forwarded your question on to one of our sales people who will get in touch with you right away to help you with your question.

The short answer is, yes, you can make sure only certain employees can trade shifts by setting up specific positions. Shift trades and drops are made based on the employees that are tagged to the position the shift is setup with.

Hello there!
I’m just trying out our trial. In love with how easy it is to schedule so far!
Just wondering, I have some staff that are in school, (ex. Brenna cannot work Monday or Tuesday Evenings.) Is a way for her to book off every Monday/Tuesday evening in one go, or does she need to manually enter it each week?

is there a possibility that WIW will have an option to set OT/DT options within the Position set up instead of a global set up? I have employees that work 10 hr shifts that earn OT after 10 hrs and I have employee that normally work 12 hr shifts and do not earn OT for those 2 hrs.

Hey Kathy – OT/DT options setup by position rather than as a global setting is not something on our roadmap, but it’s definitely something for us to consider! I’ll make sure it gets added to our list of ideas to consider :)
If you have other questions or suggestions let us know!
-Angie

I am experiencing a new problem on one terminal. We do use the computer to clock in & out using wheniwork website. This particular computer is telling my staff to find a different terminal to use. How can fix this problem? I may be reached at 727-535-6400 if you have any questions.

Hi Dan – The schedule view options we offer are daily, weekly, and monthly. For payroll purposes you can export the schedule out to a custom date range to get the 2 week numbers that you may need. This link will explain how you can export the schedule: https://help.wheniwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/201297573-Exporting-Data I hope that helps! -Angie

One of the feature requests I have raised throughout our trial is the ability to add multiple job sites to a single shift. We have a number of staff that move from location to location whilst on shift, so the the ability to have the multiple shifts is not really going to provide us much benefit as there will be a requirement to clock in and clock out far to frequently.

For us, it would be great if we can have one shift, but allocate multiple jobsites to that shift. We have paid the subscription fee but this could potentially be a deal breaker for us.

Another feature request was to be able to have the facility for Supervisors or “Schedulers” to be able to create shifts but not publish them. Essentially creating a hierarchy where we could have admin staff create the schedules then managers or supervisors on the ground approving them and then publishing them.

We’re new to when I work and I am certain the road map has a lot of requests already in it, so I have no idea if any of this is already included or indeed if it is of any interest.

Hi Adie – Thanks for the feedback! It is always welcomed and helpful for us to know what issues our users are trying to solve with scheduling :)

The requests you listed are not on our roadmap but they are definitely worth us considering. I agree that being able to add multiple job sites to one shift would be a very helpful feature. Something for us to think about.

In your other comment you mentioned having other superiors approve employee time off requests. This is available for any user you set to be a manager and/or supervisor. This wouldn’t work for you if you had users you wanted to approve time off requests but not have access to create/edit the schedule. Again, something for us to think about.

To be able to add a job site to a shift block;
Ability to add notes to Job Sites (In the same way you can a shift i.e. Site Contact Details, Sat Nav Address etc;
Ability to tag a superior for approvals in the employee record so you can have more than one Supervisor/admin dealing with leave requests etc.
Ability to display contact details on the schedule i.e. when you export a schedule under the name you can have the telephone number or email address.

I have 2 questions:
1. Is there a way to automatically log how many hours of requested time off each employee is accumulating? This would help us determine if that employee has already reached their maximum days off in a time period

2. Will there ever be a way to print on one schedule multiple locations all together?

1. We have time off tabulation that appears within an employees time off request, so when you go to approve time off you will be able to view their total time off hours for the year to date. This link will explain how this works: https://help.wheniwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/205958855-Time-Off-Tabulation. This is going to be the most automated we get with time off tabulation/accrual. The other option is to a request export from the request section of the web app.

2. We do not have future plans for printing all locations together but it is something that is on our ideas list. I’ll be sure to add your vote :)

I am wondering if there is a way to add an address when scheduling an employee, without having to separately add it to “Job Sites”. It would be so helpful if I could enter the address for the job right into the Scheduler. I send nannies to hundreds of different locations all over the valley where we live, and I need to be able to quickly add the address for the location. I hope I made sense!

Hi Megan – The best way to include the address for your nannies without using Job Sites is to add it to the shift note. It’s not a specific address field but would be available for your nannies to see when they look at their schedule. Otherwise Job Sites would be the best way to go about this if you want to get a better idea visually on the schedule as to where your nannies are going to be.

If you have other questions about how to do anything feel free to contact our care team any time at support@wheniwork.com :)

I am a new employee at a home health company, and just wanted to say that I am so impressed by WIW. Makes me love my new company even more, that they would have implemented a system like this. Very impressive, and even though I am not yet familiar with all of the functions, the things I have seen so far are just perfect for scheduling of nurses and patients. Keep up the good work!